We might have been tempted to be sympathetic, seeing them as typical of Caribbean youth, displaying the symptoms of a dysfunction so common across the region. Except that, for the most part, these are no striplings, but mature young men. And neither are they the typically unemployed youth left idling on the street corners of the region's cities.

They, ostensibly, are international sportsmen; highly paid ones, who are continually attempting, through their union, to squeeze more money from their employers, the West Indies Cricket Board. So when they consistently perform poorly, shamelessly so, and humiliate the people of the Caribbean, there is need for an accounting. Not after the completion of the Cricket World Cup and ahead of the West Indies' next cricket tour to England. But now! For there are some hard decisions to be made.

The point hereis not only about losing the consistency of West Indian losses is painful to the region's cricket fans. The greater pain is in the abject and pitiful surrenders of Brian Lara and his men, as has been the case in the three matches so far in the Super Eight round of the cricket tournament.

With each plunge further in this deep, dark abyss, some honcho of West Indies cricket comes mouthing frothy platitudes, to which, we suppose, they themselves have long stopped listening. Like captain Lara's apology to West Indian fans after the latest debacle on Tuesday against South Africa. There was a hollow, tinny ring to it. He had said it too often for it to have meaning; it sounded like recitation, something learned by rote. It touched no one, for people see in Lara's team this curious mix of a spineless, supine bunch and a group just waiting for the band to strike for the next fte.

Cricket , it seems, is to Mr. Lara's team circus minstrels on show. They do not see, and perhaps do not care to perceive - maybe it doesn't matter - any connection between the Caribbean's hosting of the World Cup and this year's celebration of the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade. Or they care not nor understand their roles as inheritors of the legacy of Constantine and Headley and Worrell; of Lord's 1950 and Australia 1960; and of the clubs Shannon (Trinidad), Lucas (Jamaica), Empire (Barbados).

So what of the hard decisions? Instead of allowing Lara and his merry band to drag the West Indian people deeper into a collective depression, the WICB might spare us the humiliation and forfeit the matches against Bangladesh and England. Let Mr. Lara and his men come to Jamaica to enjoy carnival.

Simultaneously, Lara and Bennett King, the coach, as leaders in this debacle, must irrevocably offer their resignations. That is about taking responsibility.

Then the West Indies Cricket Board must call off this summer's tour of England and all Tests and one-day internationals for the next three years while it setsabout rebuilding the game in the region. In the meantime, we play A-teams.

When the team comes back to international cricket after a period of hard, sustained work and tough management on the domestic front, it must be on the basis of performance-based pay. And the players must also know, to paraphrase C.L.R. James, that it is not to know cricket if only cricket they know.